Once upon a time, a pair of peddlars arrived at the Enterprise. Explaining that they were leading providers, they were immediately granted a meeting with King Cio. They explained to Cio that he was wearing outdated garments. He could not only dramatically increase his flexibility, but he could also fire some of his most annoyingly loyal staff, if he would just commit to using their new line of virtual clothing.

Cio was a shrewed leader, and he knew that the Wholly Roamin Emperor’s Seatoe had already decreed that the entire empire should virtualize their apparel as quickly as possible. King Cio, who’d read a very positive article about this in the Firewall Street Journal, didn’t want to be left behind, so he and his Canceller of the Chequer left with the Leading Providers to discuss you’s cases (Cio assumed that’s where they were going to keep his virtual machines).

Although King Cio couldn’t tell how they were constructed, he was awestruck by the description of the new clothing lines from vendors such as Gamble, Yippee and Muddle. Convincing himself that he could just make out the described pin stripes, he was sure that Forza offered the perfect outfits for his peasant relations team, combining elegant appearance (such as could be seen) with robust manufacture. However, some of the King’s information ministers were concerned about this last point. They demanded evidence of the construction techniques, the source of the materials, and they wanted guarantees.

The peddlars claimed that their virtual clothing line had successfully undergone the Apparel Statement of Standards, 70 times. They explained that their vendors paid huge amounts of money to very important firms that provided this authoritative guidance, ensuring that the results would be totally neutral and reliable. The ministers nodded their heads, wisely recognizing that there was no need for them to investigate any further. In the event of a later dispute, they were certain that their Apparel Statement of Standards would be covered. That’s all that mattered.

Jay Heiser is a research vice president specializing in the areas of IT risk management and compliance, security policy and organization, forensics, and investigation. Current research areas include cloud and SaaS computing risk and control, technologies and processes for the secure sharing of data… Read Full Bio

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